On Meta-Denial

Meta-denial is a common and unique human behavior where reality denial is seen and discussed without acknowledging the existence of reality denial.

The scientific foundation for meta-denial is explained by Varki’s MORT theory which states that a brain which evolves the power to understand complex reality must simultaneously evolve reality denial to exist. The probability of these two otherwise maladaptive behaviors emerging simultaneously and fixing in the gene pool to create a new highly adaptive capability is low and has apparently occurred only once on this planet.

MORT explains how a species can be smart enough to visit the moon and yet not be able to understand something as obvious as its own overshoot and imminent collapse.

Meta-denial is essentially denial of denial and is the strongest form of realty denial because acknowledgement of reality denial would collapse the house of cards our brains construct to keep us motivated to replicate.

If you look you will see meta-denial everywhere. For example:

Environmentalists that lament the denial of ecosystem destruction yet support green growth and reject population control.

Climate scientists that lament the denial of climate change while themselves denying the relationship between wealth and carbon energy and their own desire for more wealth.

Social activists that lament the widening wealth gap while denying the decline of energy quality that drives it and the austerity required in their own life to reverse the trend.

Here we have a recent example of meta-denial. The entire article is about the insanity of climate change denial and yet it does not once mention reality denial nor ask what could possibly be causing this bizarre and destructive behavior.

The US Is Burning Up, But No One Wants to Talk About The Elephant in The Room

Shhh don’t mention it.

It’s hot. Too hot. And climate scientists agree that it’s only going to get hotter. Yet despite the record-breaking heat wave impacting millions of Americans right now, barely anyone in the mainstream media is talking about the elephant in the room.

A new and distressing report from Media Matters reveals that most major broadcast TV networks are completely ignoring the link between unprecedented heat waves and climate change.

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Favorite Quotes

For explaining why humans are odd
To Varki and Brower we applaud
A great mystery they solved
With denial we evolved
And created the Higgs, overshoot, and God

Denial not only makes us believe in god, it is god, because denial created us, and denial may destroy us.

The human brain, the God it believes in, and the overshoot it enabled and denies, all resulted from the same improbable genetic adaptation that occurred about 100,000 years ago.

Denial is the reality that must be most aggressively denied to avoid collapsing the house of cards that keeps us functioning.

The most amazing thing about human overshoot is that we do not discuss it.

You know you are in trouble when reduced CO2 emissions from an economic collapse caused by low-cost oil depletion is not sufficient to prevent civilization collapse from climate change caused by previously emitted CO2.

Our only choices are do we want to fall from a higher elevation later, or climb down from a lower elevation sooner?

Things that can’t continue usually stop too late.

Truth is like poetry and most people hate poetry.

All 8 billion of us owe our existence to a six-inch layer of topsoil and the fact it rains; 6 billion of us also owe our existence to nitrogen fertilizer created from natural gas by Haber-Bosch factories.

While it digs its own grave, all the mind can do is entertain fantasies and create excuses.

When the only paying job in town is sawing off the branch which you are sitting on, you….saw away! You might refuse to saw and hang yourself from that branch, but the end is the same anyway, and that option is much less fun. (Cynic @Megacancer)

It is remarkable that a brain emerged from a cloud of hydrogen and figured out the laws of physics that governed, and possibly made inevitable, its own creation and destruction.

We have met the oblivious and they are us.

All 8 billion of us originated from one small tribe in Africa about 100,000 years ago that gave birth to a child with an improbable mutation for a more powerful brain that denied reality. The other tribes were soon toast and we took over the planet. We’re all close cousins. I love you all. Except the deniers.

Meaning comes from understanding why we can understand there is no meaning.

Way too many smart people with big reputations are wrong about everything that matters. Something’s gonna happen that gives them an excuse not to have to admit they were in denial.

One of the most, if not the most, precious and rare things in the universe is the human brain. We have a cosmic obligation to use it and to confirm it works.

Fire to cooking to intelligence to denial to god to plotting to capital punishment to self-domestication to Apollo 11 to 7 billion too many.